Guitarist Guru Raed El-Khazen

To me, Raed El-Khazen is one of the best examples of how talking to strangers changes the course of one's life. It's hard to know what to say about this man I met 12 years ago at Dizzy's Diner in Park Slope, hard to pin down exactly why when his eyes sparkled at me and his gravelly voice spoke I felt the need to look more closely at myself and at the world. He has that affect on people:) Raed is a musician, and a dedicated devotee of learning and thinking about the ways in which humans need to pursue their passions in life. I so value the time we spent together that spring, summer and fall of 2012, talking over espresso at Colson Patisserie, walking paths I had feared to tread on my own in Prospect Park, working out at the gym (I still hear his voice in my ear, coaxing me to push harder in the weight room). It was, like now, a much needed time out to sort through things, a pause to figure how things might play out better in the future. 

We are very different, Raed and I. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, during a civil war, the son of a Palestinian mother and Lebanese father, who worked hard to support Palestinian refugees. I grew up in sleepy Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Jewish Zionist parents from Chicago (my mother) and New Jersey (my father.) When we met, I'd just quit my job as a journalist with Advertising Age to raise my young boys, and he was a young childless guitarist working at Dizzy's. There were things we could have found to divide us, but what drew us to one another (I think) was a great desire to live free and clear of other people's rules, and to find for ourselves a reason for being. I credit Raed and the amazing global network of friends from Berklee School of Music I met through him for giving me the great gift of music, allowing me access to the incredible New York music scene, and pushing me to find my own ways of making rhythm, of finding harmony.

The summer we hung out, I started seeing dragonflies, big beautiful ones, everywhere I went. They seemed to be showing me my path. I imagined out loud to him one day in the park that we could make a movie of them, flying around, wild but directed, to his guitar. He smiled and told me he'd already made that movie about dragonflies, with his friend Shannon. In the fall, just before he left, back to Beirut, I got a tattoo, of a dragonfly, to remind me of that special time, to honor the important natural connection that can be made between two humans when they have the audacity to do as they please, and a great faith in talking to strangers.